Roger Penrose

University of Oxford

Area of Research:

Mathematical physics

Phone:

Sir Roger Penrose is a highly distinguished mathematician and theoretical physicist, and currently emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University. His research interests span many aspects of geometry, having made contributions to the theory of non-periodic tilings (“Penrose tilings”), to general relativity theory and quantum foundations. He has also had remarkable insights in the science of consciousness. His main research programme is to develop the theory of twistors, which he originated over 30 years ago as an attempt to unite Einstein's theory of general relativity with quantum mechanics. In 1994 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his service to science. Professor Penrose has received numerous prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize, which he shared with Stephen Hawking for their understanding of the universe, the Dannie Heinemann Prize, the Royal Society Royal Medal, the Dirac Medal and the Albert Einstein prize to name a few. His 1989 book The Emperor's New Mind became a best seller and won the 1990 (now Rhone-Poulenc) Science Book Prize. His latest books are Shadows of the Mind (1994), The Nature of Space and Time (1996) with Stephen Hawking, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind (1997) and Road to Reality (2004).